I am not Steve Rice, but I will respond, inasmuch as Risto referenced
frater2.
On Mon, 20 Oct 2008, Risto Kupsala wrote:
> Steve Rice wrote:
>> For those unfamiliar with IG, imagine a form of Basic English NOT based on
>> English as such--not a "simplified" English but grammatically autonomous. All
>> verb constructions are reduced to phrasal verbs using (IIRC) about 18 verboids.
>> These phrasal verbs are very systematic and predictable, not idiomatic.
>
> Could you list the verboids? I can't find them listed anywhere on the net.
> Are they the same as the 21 verbs of Frater 2 as listed here
> http://www.panix.com/~bartlett/frater2.html#verbs ?
They are similar, although the sets are not quite the same. (It has
been so long since I did anything with frater2 that I am no longer
quite sure. I worked on frater2 more as an amusement than anything
else, as I never had any expectation that it would go anywhere.) If
I recall, without digging out one of my copies of Interglossa (I have
two), there were 20 - 22 primary "verboids" (I don't know why Hogben
didn't just call them verbs), together with a relatively small number
of verboid (verbal) auxiliaries.
The genius was that IG could be a completely functional language with
only a quite small and closed set of verbal forms. In other words,
there was exactly no doubt whatever whether a given words was a
"verboid" or not. The system did require some use of what we would
ordinarily call adverbs and prepositions, but otherwise the system was
quite ingenious. A bare listing of the verboids themselves might be
slightly misleading, inasmuch as there were the adverbs and
prepositions which contributed to the verbal system. Hogben did give
some tables (which, unfortunately, would have to be typed in) to show
how the system worked.
In general IG resembled Basic English, but unlike BE, which was
basically fraudulent due to its massive use of English phrasal
constructions (which had to be learned as lexical wholes, making a
mockery of the claim that there were "only 850 words"), IG was fairly
clean and simple (although it used etymological rather than phonemic
spelling, even though the etymological spelling is clearer to me
personally).
I think that Interglossa was a good auxlang that never got a fair
chance, coming out as it did in the depths of World War II. (Even
the surviving copies, such as mine, were printed on cheap "war" paper
and tend to be somewhat fragile, making photocopying or scanning
difficult.)
--
Paul Bartlett